Suddenly Basia’s steps were heard in the ante-room, and her childlike voice repeating, “Frost! frost! frost!”
Pan Michael sprang away from Krysia like a frightened panther from his victim; and at that moment Basia rushed in with an uproar, repeating incessantly, “Frost! frost! frost!” Suddenly she stumbled against the drum lying in the middle of the room. Then she stopped, and looking with astonishment, now on the drum, now on Krysia, now on the little knight, said, “What is this? You struck each other, as with a dart?”
“But where is auntie?” asked Krysia, striving to bring out of her heaving breast a quiet, natural voice.
“Auntie is climbing out of the sleigh by degrees,” answered Basia, with an equally changed voice. Her nostrils moved a number of times. She looked once more at Krysia and Pan Michael, who by that time had raised the drum, then she left the room suddenly.
Pani Makovetski rolled into the room; Pan Zagloba came downstairs, and a conversation set in about the wife of the chamberlain of Lvoff.
“I did not know that she was Pan Adam’s godmother,” said Pani Makovetski; “he must have made her his confidante, for she is persecuting Basia with him terribly.”
“But what did Basia say?” asked Zagloba.
“‘A halter for a dog!’ She said to the chamberlain’s lady: ‘He has no mustache, and I have no sense; and it is not known which one will get what is lacking first.’”
“I knew that she would not lose her tongue; but who knows what her real thought is? Ah, woman’s wiles!”
“With Basia, what is on her heart is on her lips. Besides, I have told you already that she does not feel the will of God yet; Krysia does, in a higher degree.”